No. 358
White to play. This is from Lee-Zakharov, Vrnjacka Banja 1963. Black has just captured on c3 and now 1 Qxc3…
On the record
In Competition No. 2893 you were invited to suggest suitable Desert Island Discs for a historical figure, living or dead.…
Dear Mary
Q. I have moved from London to the centre of a historic market town, now becoming famous as a foodie…
Sharing Caring
The Ivy Chelsea Garden is a restaurant inside an Edwardian house disguised as a Tudor house on the King’s Road;…
A deadly silence
One Friday, 28 people were rescued by the Italian coastguard when the boat on which they were fleeing Libya capsized in…
Passion
‘I long for spontaneous passion but I will never get it with my husband because I think he has Asperger…
Cricket’s glorious dead
He’s a tall man, Kevin Pietersen, and he casts a long shadow. It loomed large over the Long Room at…
The extraordinary Green manifesto
I’m disappointed that Ed Balls’s suggestion that the Office of Budget Responsibility should audit the parties’ manifestos was never taken…
The extraordinary Green manifesto
I’m disappointed that Ed Balls’s suggestion that the Office of Budget Responsibility should audit the parties’ manifestos was never taken…
No fairy tale ending
It all depends how you like your fairy tales. OK, so we would have loved the retiring Tony ‘AP’ McCoy,…
Demosthenes vs Michael Fallon
Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon’s claim that Ed Miliband, having practised on his brother, would also stab his…
Barometer
Out of tune The use of a song, ‘Love Natural’ by the Crystal Fighters, at the launch of the Labour…
Am I still an Englishman?
From ‘Some reflections of an alien enemy: the contradiction between being and feeling an Englishman, by a Czech’, The Spectator, 17…
Portrait of the week
Home Launching the Conservative party manifesto, David Cameron, the party leader, told voters he wanted to ‘turn the good news…
The legend returns
Daniel Barenboim is back in town: the South Bank is mounting a ‘Barenboim Project 2015’ in which he’s playing the…
The legend returns
Daniel Barenboim is back in town: the South Bank is mounting a ‘Barenboim Project 2015’ in which he’s playing the…
By Air
Astonishing to think That not so long ago First the Brothers Wright Then Louis Blériot Initiated flight. And strapped into…
Words
Late afternoon I speak to Mum on the phone; she’s sorting through her past, four hundred or so odd-sized photographs.…
Did the £20 million Norwegian’s pay row make BG cheaper for Shell?
Helge Lund was widely expected to go into domestic politics when he ended his successful tenure as head of Statoil,…
Warning: you may be about to vote for more than one government
For the last five years, I’ve been trying to get people interested in the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. No, don’t…
The power of collective grievance
When last Sunday Pope Francis took the brave step of acknowledging the Armenian tragedy as the ‘first genocide of the…
Cameron must show he’s not too posh to push
At 5.45 a.m. Lynton Crosby holds the first meeting of the day at Conservative campaign HQ. The aim is to…
Call me insane, but I’m voting Labour
Quite often when I deliver myself of an opinion to a friend or colleague, the reply will come back: ‘Are…
